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1 review

by David G. Atwill

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Islamic Shangri-La transports readers to the heart of the Himalayas as it traces the rise of the Tibetan Muslim community from the 17th century to the present. Radically altering popular interpretations that have portrayed Tibet as isolated and monolithically Buddhist, David Atwill's vibrant account demonstrates how truly cosmopolitan Tibetan society was by highlighting the hybrid influences and internal diversity of Tibet. In its exploration of the Tibetan Muslim experience, this book presents an unparalleled perspective of Tibet's standing during the rise of post–World War II Asia. ...

by Pieter Friedrich

Gandhi has been called the “Father of India” and his name is often invoked as a synonym for peaceful revolution, compassion, and racial harmony. Many leaders, scholars, and academics have continued to uphold this narrative of Gandhi for decades. But is there another side to Gandhi’s legacy which has been suppressed? This booklet examines the topic of whether Gandhi was a racist or a revolutionary by delving into his words and actions on three major topics — personal morality, the caste system, and the African people....

by Seonmin Kim

A free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Ginseng and Borderland explores the territorial boundaries and political relations between Qing China and Choson Korea during the period from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. By examining a unique body of materials written in Chinese, Manchu, and Korean, and building on recent studies in New Qing History, Seonmin Kim adds new perspectives to current understandings of the remarkable transformation of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1636–1912) from a tribal state to a universal empire. This book discusses early Manchu history and explores the Qing Empire’s policy of controlling Manchuria and Ch...

by Lowell Dittmer

A free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. China’s relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the island two months later. The island’s autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT’s insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China—and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually...

15 reviews

by Henry Freeman

☆ Chinese History in 50 Events ☆
As one of the oldest civilizations in the world, China has a vast, rich history. In order to assist with the study of Chinese history, this book has been broken down into a series of straightforward, easy-to-read vignettes.

Inside you will read about...
✓ The Great Flood
✓ The Great Wall is begun
✓ The Terra Cotta Army is created
✓ Gunpowder is invented
✓ Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution
✓ Marco Polo travels to China
✓ The Forbidden City is completed
✓ First Opium War
✓ SARS outbreak
And much more!

This book will provide in-depth insights into some of the most important events in Chinese history while providing an overall context within which ...

by George E. Dutton

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. A Vietnamese Moses is the story of Philiphê Binh, a Vietnamese Catholic priest who in 1796 traveled from Tonkin to the Portuguese court in Lisbon to persuade its ruler to appoint a bishop for his community of ex-Jesuits. Based on Binh’s surviving writings from his thirty-seven-year exile in Portugal, this book examines how the intersections of global and local Roman Catholic geographies shaped the lives of Vietnamese Christians in the early modern era. The book also argues that Binh’s mission to Portugal and his intense lobbying on behalf of his community reflected the agency of Vietnamese Catholics, who vigorously...

by Valerie Stoker

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How did the patronage activities of India’s Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1346–1565) influence Hindu sectarian identities? Although the empire has been commonly viewed as a Hindu bulwark against Islamic incursion from the north or as a religiously ecumenical state, Valerie Stoker argues that the Vijayanagara court was selective in its patronage of religious institutions. To understand the dynamic interaction between religious and royal institutions in this period, she focuses on the career of the Hindu intellectual and monastic leader Vyasatirtha. An agent of the state and a powerful religious authority, V...

7 reviews

by Stephan Weaver

★★★ WWII JAPAN ★★★
The story of Japanese involvement in WWII is one that includes a number of amazing events between 1939 and 1945. The Japanese went from fighting against just the Chinese to attempting to practically take on the entire world at the one time.

Inside you will learn about...
✓ The Attack on Pearl Harbor
✓ The Pacific War Begins
✓ The Completion of the War Plan.
✓ Attacking Australia and Further Expansion
✓ Battle of the Coral Sea
✓ The Battle for the Solomon Islands
✓ The Bomb
✓ The Japanese Surrender
And much more!

This is a story of rapid expansion, an attempt at consolidation, and ultimately, retreat and massacre. It is a story of honor, of Allied unity, and ...

1 review

by Rajeev Kinra

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan “Brahman” (d. c.1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four different emperors, Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627), Shah Jahan (1628-1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658-1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. As a high-caste H...

1 review

by Andrew Ollett

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Language of the Snakes traces the history of the Prakrit language as a literary phenomenon, starting from its cultivation in courts of the Deccan in the first centuries of the common era. Although little studied today, Prakrit was an important vector of the kavya movement and once joined Sanskrit at the apex of classical Indian literary culture. The opposition between Prakrit and Sanskrit was at the center of an enduring “language order” in India, a set of ways of thinking about, naming, classifying, representing, and ultimately using languages. As a language of classical literature that nevertheless retained its as...

by Garrett Field

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The study of South Asian music falls under the purview of ethnomusicology, whereas that of South Asian literature falls under South Asian studies. As a consequence of this academic separation, scholars rarely take notice of connections between South Asian song and poetry. Modernizing Composition overcomes this disciplinary fragmentation by examining the history of Sinhala-language song and poetry in twentieth-century Sri Lanka. Garrett Field describes how songwriters and poets modernized song and poetry in response to colonial and postcolonial formations. The story of this modernization is significant in that it shi...

14 reviews

by Hourly History

Mao Zedong* * *Download for FREE on Kindle Unlimited + Free BONUS Inside!* * *Read On Your Computer, MAC, Smartphone, Kindle Reader, iPad, or Tablet.For a champion of the poor, Mao Zedong was born to a wealthy aristocratic family in Shaoshan, Hunan China. As an adolescent, he once had to defend his father’s farm from starving peasants during a famine, who wished to seize his father's land and steal his grain. This same Mao would later promote a policy of land reform that would give those peasants the green light to violently overthrow the rich land owners all over the Chinese countryside. Inside you will read about...✓ Where Revolution Was Made ✓ Mao Comes Into His Own ✓ Mao, the Pragmatist ✓ From Nanking to Pearl Harbor ✓ Consolidating Power ✓ Mao’s Stranglehold ✓ Mao Lo...

by Conor Keane

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by Julia C. Bullock

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present. Drawing on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology, each chapter presents the results of research based on some combination of original archival research, careful textual analysis, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation.The volume is organized into sections focused on activism and activists, employment and education, literature and the arts, and boundary crossing. Some chapters shed light on ideas and practices that resonate with feminist thought but find expression through the work of writers, artists, act...

8 reviews

by David Lucas

The ancient Vietnamese life in which Tung was raised is being torn apart. It is not enough to work hard and grow rice anymore. Now every farmer in Mai Dong has to pick a side.

The French or the Communists.

"They are going to murder your father."

Intelligence, humility and graft made Que an honorable figure in Mai Dong. His values ensured the family's survival through famine and flood. They will not protect him against the Communists, who need class-enemy victims for their land reform campaign.

Tung becomes protector and provider for the family, who struggle to stick together as World War Two, the French Indochinese War, and the American War tear his country apart over forty years.

Vietnam becomes the battleground for th...

by Roger T. Ames

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single acto...

by Masayuki Tanimoto

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Scholarly discussions on economic development in history, specifically those linked to industrialization or modern economic growth, have paid great attention to the formation and development of the market economy as a set of institutions able to augment people’s welfare. The role of specific nonmarket practices for promoting the economic development and welfare has been a distinct concern, typically involving discussion of the state’s economic policies. How have societies tackled those issues that the market did not? To what extent did those solutions reflect the structure of an economy? Public Goods Provision in...

by Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger

In Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes six representative Indian folklore genres from a single regional repertoire to show the influence of their intertextual relations on the composition and interpretation of artistic performance. Placing special emphasis on women’s rituals, she looks at the relationship between the framework and organization of indigenous genres and the reception of folklore performance. The regional repertoire under examination presents a strikingly female-centered world. Female performers and characters are active, articulate, and frequently challenge or defy expectations of gender. Men also confound traditional gender roles. Flueckiger includes the translations of two full performance texts of narratives sung by fem...

by Liang Emlyn Yang

This open access book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspectives, ranging from archaeology, paleoclimatology, antiquity, historical geography, agriculture, carving art and literacy. The Silk Road is a modern concept for an ancient network of trade routes that for centuries facilitated and intensified processes of cultural interaction and goods exchange between West China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest possible links between social upheaval, resource utilization and climate or environment forces along the Silk Road ...

by Wan-Cheung Yi

The Imjin War, 1592…

Korea’s Joseon Dynasty falls to myriads of samurai under the hand of the Japanese warlord Taiko-sama. Despite Japan’s victories, ninja master Ryo Uguisu witnesses a different type of war dominated by Korea on the seas. Trained in the Korean language, and charmed by Joseon’s luxuries, Ryo decides to defect from the Japanese army by disguising himself as a Korean. After dragging his birdwatching companion, a Korean-inarticulate blind martial artist, into his scheme, Ryo finds that the Korean and Japanese cultures aren’t all that similar. And to make things worse, the hordes of Taiko-sama always raze his potential homes.

How will the duo manage? How hard can playing Korean be? What of the Imjin War?

Find out in TE N...

by Matthew Kirsch

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.The Hasegawa Reader is an open access companion to the bilingual catalogue copublished with The Noguchi Museum to accompany an international touring exhibition, Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan. The exhibition features the work of two artists who were friends and contemporaries: Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa. This volume is intended to give scholars and general readers access to a wealth of archival material and writings by and about Saburo Hasegawa. While Noguchi’s reputation as a preeminent American sculptor of the twentieth century only grows stronger,...

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